RADIATION, SPORES, AND SPACE MONSTERS

June 04, 2007by: jovial_cynic

I don't mind eating mushrooms. Back when I used to work at Godfather's Pizza, I'd periodically swipe toppings as I made a pizza and popped as many slices of mushrooms into my mouth as any other delicious topping. After they've gone through the oven, I'm not so fond of them; I prefer my mushrooms in their natural state.

They are weird, though. They reproduce via spores. Spores. Did you ever watch the GI Joe movie where Cobra dumped spores into the atmosphere which created a mutating affect on the unsuspecting population? Yeah. Spores. Creepy.

Add radiation to the mix, and you've gone from creepy to horifying. And that's exactly what science is looking to do.

The ability of fungi to live off radiation could also prove useful to people: "Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets," says Dr. Ekaterina Dadachova, associate professor of nuclear medicine and microbiology & immunology at Einstein and lead author of the study.

Quite frankly, this sounds like a good way to create fungal monsters. And they plan to have astronauts eat this stuff? This does not sound like a good idea.